While home fishing in Georgia during a summer when his popularity was at low tide, President Jimmy Carter's small boat was "attacked" by a mysterious swimming rabbit, which the president warded off with a paddle. Once leaked into print by Brooks Jackson of the Associated Press, the bizarre story captured the press's and the public's imagination, becoming a metaphor for Carter's hapless, enfeebled presidency. The incident encouraged Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's primary challenge to Carter's renomination, and it became a symbolic preamble to Carter's landslide loss in November 1980.